1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to liquid ejection methods.
2. Related Art
There are various types of liquid ejection apparatuses that cause liquid to be ejected from nozzles onto targeted objects, including, for example, printing apparatuses, color filter manufacturing apparatuses, and dyeing apparatuses. In such liquid ejection apparatuses, situations occur in which the liquid inside the nozzles thickens in viscosity due to the solvent component of the liquid evaporating, for example. Liquid that has thickened in viscosity (which is also referred to hereinafter as “thickened liquid”) is not preferable since it may cause the directions in which the liquid flies to vary or give rise to clogging in the nozzles. In view of this, liquid ejection apparatuses that carry out operations allowing thickened liquid to be ejected from nozzles that have moved away from a targeted object have been proposed. For example, as a type of printing apparatus that ejects ink toward a medium, one that ejects thickened ink by ejecting ink from nozzles that have moved away from the medium has been proposed. (See, for example, JP-A-2000-15843.) Further, operations for allowing thickened liquid to be ejected are performed employing dedicated drive signals exclusively used for that purpose. (See, for example, JP-A-2002-273912.)
As described above, in order to perform the operations for allowing thickened liquid to be ejected, it is necessary to make a drive signal generation section generate the dedicated drive signals. It is thus necessary to change the drive signals to be generated by the drive signal generation section for cases where the nozzles are located above the targeted object and for cases where the nozzles are located outside the targeted object. To enable this change, it is necessary to perform special control such as interruption processing, which makes the control complicated.